Why a Booktrail?
1980s: Many areas and sights in Suffolk are evoked in this mystery tale of a secret amongst twins..
The Twins
What you need to know before your trail
The Twins – Isolte and Viola – grow up not knowing who their father was. Their hippy mother tells them that she met him at a music festival and that’s all there is to it. But could it be Jim Morrison as their mum is always playing his records.
Reality out shines any thoughts like this however as both of the twins have real issues in life. Viola suffers from Anorexia and Isolte visits constantly although a busy journalist. When Isolte loses her job, her world too seems to spiralling out of control.
Something happened one summer when the twins were out playing. Something they have never spoken of. Could their troubled minds now be linked to this? What did happen?
Travel Guide
London
Isolte has a comfortable job and lifestyle but battles to support her twin sister dealing with anorexia. They remember their unconventional hippie upbringing back in Wales and Suffolk but the one secret which binds them in particular has left Viola with demons of her own.
Flashbacks take us back to those sunny Suffolk days….
Suffolk
The twins upbringing in the Suffolk countryside was at time idyllic as well as misguided and confusing – not surprising given their mother’s penchant for hippy style living, music and thoughts.
Alongside the Suffolk fields and the forests the twins play in, the overall atmosphere – The Aids Epidemic and the Hungerford massacre help place this novel firmly in the 80s.
Canvases are stacked against the walls; others have been hung in groups. Suffolk landscapes, in soft greens, burnished browns and grey -blues. Isolte recognises the marshes, the shingle beaches and a field with horse grazing.
Having moved from a commune in Wales to a cabin in the woods, the setting is one of mystery and intrigue for as we return via flashbacks, we see the places they played in and the games they played and the moment things changed – when their mother’s boyfriend comes to live with them with his daughter Polly. Having also found playmates in another set of twins – John and Michael – the childhood games and adventures are soon revealed to be a game that went very wrong indeed.
But whilst we are in Suffolk, the sense of adventure is so carefree that it takes us away on a dream – and ultimately making the snap back to reality all the more sinister –
“After bumping along the sea wall we came to a Martello Tower, a huge circular fortress of sombre stone, built as a look out post in the Napoleonic wars. the tower seemed impenetrable”
suffolktouristguide.com/Martello-Towers
Yet the children play here, and on the shingle beaches, passing Suffolk punches (horses) and all kinds of flowers growing in quiet Suffolk fields.
And later, this past can and does come back to haunt – and there is a special bond between twins that ties them together in ways good or bad.
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